University Gazette - Humphries helps countless children escape through bookshttp://unclineberger.org/news/university-gazette-humphries-helps-countless-children-escape-through-books
For the fifth straight year, UNC Libraries and campus collect books for the Pediatric Hematology-Oncology clinic.Karl Humphries loved books. For the three years he battled a brain tumor, they were his mental departure from the waiting room at N.C. Children’s Hospital’s pediatric cancer clinic, his imaginary getaway from tests and treatments and diagnoses.

When he passed away in 2007 at age 13, his mom made it her mission to give kids like Karl the chance at a literary escape, as well.

As the Book Fairy, Kathy Humphries – who works part-time for Carolina’s grounds department – has collected rooms filled with cardboard picture books, vintage mysteries and longer classics to be enjoyed by everyone from the tiniest toddlers to the most tempestuous early-teens who are undergoing treatment at UNC.

For the fifth straight year, UNC Libraries and campus partners will add to that tally with a campus-wide book drive. The goal: to push the five-year collection total past 10,000.

“The book drive has been a perfect way to bring escape and comfort to children through books,” said Eileen Dewitya, one of the library staff members helping to organize this year’s drive. “That’s something that library employees are universally passionate about, and we’ve been so grateful for the terrific community response.”

Humphries, whose husband, Chink, works at UNC Libraries, threw herself into the project just a month after her son died. Looking for a way to fill her time – and maybe a bit of her heart – she asked Karl’s doctor, Stuart Gold, chief of the division of hematology/oncology in the Department of Pediatrics, how she could help the clinic.

“His response was, ‘Since Karl loved books so much, why not do something with the books?’’’ she remembers.

It made sense. Karl was a voracious reader and his mom used to stuff bags with books for him to read to help hours pass in the clinic. When Karl began treatment, the old clinic in the Gravely building didn’t have a large book selection. When the clinic moved into its current space on the first floor of the N.C. Cancer Hospital, the waiting room had plenty of shelves waiting to be stacked.

It didn’t take long. The year before UNC Libraries became involved with the book drive, schools and organizations helped Humphries fill her garage and then a storage unit with thousands of books. Nurses started telling children in the clinic that the stories they picked out each visit (and are allowed to keep) came from the “Book Fairy,’’ and the idea took off.

Donning a long skirt, wings and a sparkly shirt fashioned from one of Karl’s old Halloween outfits, Humphries began visiting even more schools and organizations, collecting books and telling her family’s story. Now, a backlog of children’s books is used to re-stack (and re-stock) the shelves in the clinic whenever needed.

Humphries said she has never paid much attention to the number of books she has collected, but she thinks Karl would be impressed.

“He’s still with me, he’s driven me on,” she said. “The books to me represent any sort of softness or escape that we can give the kids, because they are in a place that they shouldn’t have to be.”

During a recent afternoon at the pediatric cancer clinic, 11-year-old patient Mariah Andrews spoke softly about what books mean to her: “I can imagine myself in a different place, going on an adventure or solving a mystery,’’ she said. “I can do anything.”

Like Karl, Mariah is an avid reader, scorching through a bag full of books each week, happy to see the shelves in the waiting room replenished each time she travels from Fayetteville to the clinic.

The Book Fairy (and many helpers, including the UNC student volunteer group CPALS) make sure of it.

“It’s all a little bittersweet,’’ Humphries said. “You hate for the kids to be in this situation; it just doesn’t seem right. … But if you can help them get away from the boredom, bring them a smile, that’s a good thing.”

]]>No publisherUniversity Gazette2013/11/22 11:55:00 GMT-5News ItemUniversity Gazette - Carolina’s capacity to prevent and treat cancer must continue to growhttp://unclineberger.org/news/university-gazette-carolina2019s-capacity-to-prevent-and-treat-cancer-must-continue-to-grow
Shelley Earp is not going anywhere, but at year’s end he will leave a position he has held for the past 16 years as director of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.He’ll continue his role as the first director of UNC Cancer Care, a position that coordinates cancer care and research across the University, the School of Medicine and UNC Health Care. Bill Roper, dean of the School of Medicine and CEO of the UNC Health Care System, appointed Earp to the position.

Earp spoke to the Board of Trustees last month about the impact of UNC Lineberger in preventing, detecting and treating cancer. Afterward, the trustees and everyone attending the meeting gave him a standing ovation.

Cancer, Earp said, is a disease that has affected every family in the world.

“This is a big problem: 1.6 million people in this country have cancer and that number will rise to 2 million by the end of the decade as the population continues to age,” he explained.

Efforts to treat the disease represent 4 percent to 5 percent of the United States’ gross national product.

“This is really an important financial problem that we have to get right if we are actually going to make health care better, of higher quality and more affordable,” Earp said. “But it is more than that. Cancer has an impact all across our society. People are afraid. They see it in every family and that’s why it is a great opportunity for our University to take on this problem.”

And take it on Carolina has, as Earp has witnessed. After graduating from the UNC School of Medicine in 1970, he joined the faculty in 1976, one year after the National Cancer Institute designated UNC Lineberger as a cancer center.

When Earp became the center’s director in 1997, it had 190 faculty members. Today, that number has grown to 335 faculty members who now bring in a total of $240 million in cancer-related funding each year.

The center has witnessed tremendous growth in the University’s cancer enterprise during the past four decades, but none more dramatic than in the last decade, Earp said. What has driven that growth in the past six years is the University

Cancer Research Fund (UCRF), which Earp and many others advocated as a necessary means to advance research and treatment efforts.

The state of North Carolina established the UCRF in August 2007 to reduce the burden of cancer, North Carolina’s leading cause of death.

Building on its $180 million investment in the N.C. Cancer Hospital, the N.C. General Assembly allocated $25 million to the UCRF in 2007–08, $40 million in 2008–09 and $50 million per year after that. Revenue from the Tobacco Trust Fund and an increased tax on smokeless tobacco products were to add $50 million a year to the UCRF in perpetuity.

This year, however, the General Assembly reduced the allocation to $42 million.

When Carolina Trustee Steve Lerner asked Earp to explain how the $8 million cut affects UNC Lineberger, Earp said it has led to a reduction in recruitment efforts and put at risk the “forward-looking innovation” that has been central to the center’s success.

“Money is the key to staying on top of innovation,” Earp said. “It’s just good business to invest in the health of North Carolina.”

Earp, professor of medicine and pharmacology, served as the center’s deputy director and Lineberger professor of cancer research for six years before he was named UNC Lineberger director in 1997. His research areas of interest include the behavior of cancer cells and the signals that regulate cell growth and differentiation.

]]>No publisherUniversity Gazette2013/10/18 08:30:00 GMT-4News ItemSmithies - Separate research paths lead to a lifelong partnershiphttp://unclineberger.org/news/smithies-separate-research-paths-lead-to-a-lifelong-partnership
UNC Gazette - Oliver Smithies and Nobuyo Maeda were born in island countries half a world apart – he in England, she in Japan – but each in their own way found a path to a life in science.Their individual paths took them to the United States and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where they eventually found each other.

When Maeda was unable to secure a faculty position there in 1988, Smithies urged her to apply to other research universities. Wherever she went, he told her, he would follow.